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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 08 Hansard (Wednesday, 4 August 2004) . . Page.. 3462 ..

been a lot of prosecutions; only one person has been sent to jail in the past three years, I believe. That does not necessarily indicate a problem with the options open to the magistrates or to the courts. That identifies a problem with reporting animal cruelty, police and RSPCA follow-up of animal cruelty and getting a case to the stage where it is presented to the courts. I understand there is a successful rate when prosecutions go to court, so further investigation needs to be done into how actions of animal cruelty are being reported, how they are being followed up by the police and brought through the courts. A whole range of things needs to be investigated. That being said, I can see the points put forward by Ms Tucker are in need of support.

Question put:

That clause 4 be agreed to.

The Assembly voted—

Question so resolved in the negative.

Clause 4 negatived.

Clause 5.

MS DUNDAS (5.28): I move amendment No 1 circulated in my name [see schedule 4 at page 3472].

I move this amendment to express a concern that some of the penalties put forward in Mr Stefaniak’s original bill were too severe and would not work as a deterrent. This area talks about negligence, and there would have been scope to impose a greater period of imprisonment or fine on somebody who negligently treats an animal cruelly as opposed to those who negligently treat a human cruelly. That was something I could not support. Although it is quite apparent that even if this clause is amended it will then be defeated, that serves to indicate that there is further work to be done in relation to how penalties are being seen as a deterrent and whether or not just increasing the penalties would stop people committing the crime.

MR STEFANIAK (5.29): The opposition will be supporting this. I indicated that to Ms Dundas yesterday. I assisted her office with this and I thank her office for the courtesy of having a good chat about it. Indeed, I do not accept the reasons given as to why this should be lower than some of the other penalties I had but, at the end of the day, it is not unreasonable. Funnily enough, now it probably will be twice as high as the rest of the penalties, but again, I have always been one to take a gradualist approach. Having been in this place for a while, I think something is better than nothing, which is another reason why I am more than happy to support this. When the Chief Minister gets around

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